Bard envisions the liberal arts institution as the hub of a network, rather than a single, self-contained campus. Numerous institutes for special study are available on and off campus, connecting Bard students to the greater community.

The Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College embodies the fundamental belief that education and civil society are inextricably linked. In an age of information overload, it is more important than ever that citizens be educated and trained to think critically and be actively engaged with issues affecting public life.

Bard Faculty

Myra Young Armstead

She specializes in U.S. social history, with emphasis on urban and African American history. Armstead is the recipient of Danforth-Compton, Josephine de Kármán, University of Chicago Trustees, and New York State African-American Research Institute fellowships; and the Frederick Douglass Award from the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History (Sullivan County, New York, chapter). She is Speaker in the Humanities for the New York Council for the Humanities (2003–present) and she is a member of the New York Academy of History (2006– ). Armstead is the author of Freedom's Gardener: James F. Brown, Horticulture, and the Hudson Valley in Antebellum America (2012); “Lord, Please Don’t Take Me in August”: African Americans in Newport and Saratoga Springs (1999); and Mighty Change, Tall Within: Black Identity in the Hudson Valley (2003). She received her B.A. at Cornell University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She has been on the Bard faculty since 1985.